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Hiding Underground - People, Seeds, Books
Forget about surviving an apocalypse by doing anything as crude as running for the highest hill, or eating cockroaches. An American firm called Vivos is selling stylish global catastrophe condos. Terrorism? Tsunami? Earthquake? Volcano? Pole shift? Iran? Anarchy? Solar flare? You name the catastrophe and Vivos claims it's got the solution.
Vivos is building 20 resorts across the USA filled with underground "assurance of life" condos capable of sustaining up to 4,000 people for a year when the earth no longer can. The cost? A little over £32,000 a head, plus a demeaning-sounding screening test that determines whether you are able to offer meaningful contribution to the continuation of the human race. Company literature posits, gently, that "Vivos may prove to be the next Genesis", and they are understandably reluctant to flub the responsibility.
UNDERGROUND CONDOS
If you've got the cash, the rewards of a berth in a Vivos shelter are high. Each staffed complex has a decontamination shower and a jogging machine; a refrigerated vault for human DNA and a conference room with wheely chairs. There are TVs and radios, flat-screen computers, a hospital ward, even a dentist's surgery ready to serve those who forgot to pack a toothbrush in the hurry. "Virtually any meal" can be cooked from a stockpile of ingredients that includes "baked potato soup" but, strangely, no fish, tinned or otherwise. Framed pictures of mountain ranges should help ease the loss of a world left behind. Vivos says it has already received 1,000 applications.
Nostradamus, the Bible and Native American lore suggest 2019, 2029 and 2036 as danger years. But the real fear is for 21 December 2012 when the Mayan calender cycle ends. Vivos has a countdown clock on its website ticking away the hours.
The Norway Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a "doomsday" seed bank, stores backup copies of as many as three million different crop varieties in case of a worldwide catastrophe.
The high-tech underground vault "puts an end to extinction of agricultural crops," says Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust in Rome, Italy, which is the leading force behind the project.
The mission is crucial, Fowler noted, because the stored seeds provide "survivors" with the raw genetic materials needed to adapt the global food supply to survive climate change as well as water and energy shortages.
UNDERGROUND BOOKS
What else has been lowered underground? One million rare, reference and special collection books as well as valuable archives have been buried 150 metres underground in Cheshire’s salt mines. This includes a collection of the Manchester Central Library’s most precious treasures, some of which date back to the 15th century.
Valuable manuscripts by Handel, a large newspaper archive and items from the library’s Henry Watson Music Collection will all be kept in the mines. Steve Willis, operations manager at Manchester Central Library, said: ‘The removal was a huge job. We started in February 2010 but the planning was done for months before that."
Experts say the mine's caverns – the size of 700 football pitches - provide the perfect environment for preserving the manuscripts, which include the works of eminent academics.
The underground books and manuscripts will be digitally catalogued but inaccessible for the duration of the library refurbishment which will take years. More than 22 miles of shelving and one million books - including more than 30 works dating back to the 15th century and 44,000 published before 1850 - will be relocated to the mines. The project is part of multi-million pound plans to transform and modernise St Peter's Square and the Town Hall Complex.
Will the underground books and manuscripts be "exhumed" in 2013 when the new lending library is scheduled to re-open? Will they ever see the light of day in 2013?
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